Harvesters of various types, including sugarcane harvesters, may include harvesting devices of various types. Harvesting devices for a sugarcane harvester, for example, may include assemblies for cutting, chopping, sorting, transporting, and otherwise gathering and processing sugarcane plants. Typical harvesting devices include base cutter assemblies (or “base cutters”), feed rollers, cutting drums, and so on. In various harvesters, harvesting devices may be hydraulically powered by an engine-driven (or other) pump.
To actively harvest crops, a harvester may move along a field with harvesting devices engaged, the harvesting devices gathering and processing material from rows of crop plants. In the case of sugarcane harvesters, gathered sugarcane stalks may be chopped into billets for delivery to a trailing wagon, while leaves and trash may be separated from the billets and ejected into the field.
Sugarcane may be planted in a variety of arrangements, including in fields with raised rows, flat rows, rows with various spacings, and so on. As such, a configuration of harvesting devices that is useful for harvesting a particular field may not be optimal for harvesting a different field. For example, in fields with one particular row spacing, a particular width between crop dividers may be utilized to appropriately direct sugarcane into the harvester. In fields with a different row spacing, however, a different width between crop dividers may be more effective. Similarly, a particular combination and orientation of various base cutters (or other harvesting devices) may be particularly suitable to specific field arrangements and sugarcane characteristics. A different combination and orientation, however, may be more effective in other circumstances.